Roggenstein Castle

Architecture, patrimoine et histoire · Landkreis Göppingen

Roggenstein Castle was a small castle built on a rock on Roggenstein hill, at an altitude of about 570 metres, above the mill known as the Untere Roggenmühle, within the territory of Geislingen an der Steige in the Swabian Jura. It is said to have been built between 1150 and 1170 by a certain Konrad von Roggenstein, at a time when many minor lords were fortifying the limestone escarpments of the region. Its occupation was short-lived: the castle appears to have been abandoned around 1250, less than a century after its construction. In 1281 a Konrad Ruggestain, a burgher of Geislingen, appears in the sources, though it is unknown whether he descended from the builders. No significant masonry survives, but the site, measuring about 15 by 30 metres, remains recognisable thanks to the ditch that separated the rock from the plateau. The site is among the "forgotten castles" of the Swabian Jura recorded in specialist literature, and bears witness to the density of small seigneurial fortifications around Geislingen in the High Middle Ages.